Methods are known in the art of glass manufacturing for preheating glass batch wherein glass-forming, batch ingredients are brought in direct contact with heated media within a chamber. The particulate or granular glass batch raw materials are brought in particle-particle heat exchange with media that has been heated with an external burner or heated with exhaust gases from a glass melting furnace. This method allows the exchange of large quantities of heat economically and uniformly.
The preheating of glass batch at times may generate high particulate emissions in the chamber. Often there also are particulate emissions in the flue gases exhausting from the glass melting furnace.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,338,112, 4,338,113 and 4,362,543 disclose processes which improved on known means for reducing the particulate emissions in the exhaust gas stream from a glass melting furnace. Cool exhaust gases were electrically charged and passed through an electrified bed of agglomerates to remove particulate from the spent gases.